West of Here (2 page)

Near the end of the line, seeming to Mather out of place, a small native child seized his attention. Boy or girl, Mather was unable to ascertain, but the child, lithe and moonfaced, squinted fiercely with pointed blue eyes as he passed.

When he reached the staging area, Mather hefted his trunk onto the growing pile, and before he’d even ventured to get his bearings, was met by a very pregnant woman, with a very earnest handshake, and a frazzled knot of hair atop her head.

“Mr. Mather, is it?”

“It is. And you are?”

“Eva Lambert of the
Commonwealth Register.
”

Mather glanced past her at the muddy hillside and the ragtag assembly of wooden structures riddling the shoreline, then eyed doubtfully the colorful floppy bow dangling from beneath Eva’s shirt collar. “A social register? Here?”

“A newspaper, Mr. Mather. The region’s
only
newspaper. And not
here,
but
there,
over the hill at the commonwealth.”

Mather smiled down at her through his formidable red beard. He snuck a glance at her belly pushed tight against her blouse, then another at her tiny left hand and saw no band adorning it.

Neither look escaped Eva’s notice. “No woman, Mr. Mather, should have to wear seven pounds of underwear. Furthermore, marriage is not a career.”

Mather beamed his amusement down upon her once more, scratching his big shaggy head. “So, then, no hearth and needles for you, is it?”

Eva smoothed the cotton blouse over her belly and looked right up into his smiling brown eyes. “It was not my intention to stir your playful side, Mr. Mather. I was hoping to ask you some questions.”

Mather could not ignore the heaviness of her breasts but resisted the impulse to look at them. He looked instead at her jawline, sleek in spite of her condition, and the feline complexity of her carriage. “Ah,” he said. “You want answers. Well, if that’s what you’re after, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. I’ve made an exclusive with the
Seattle Press.
They ask the questions.”

“And who else owns your expedition? Who else has designs on our resources?”

“I’m afraid those are questions, Miss Lambert.” He shifted distractedly, removing his elbow from its perch, as another parcel was hefted onto the pile. “Sitka,” he called out to one of the bear dogs sniffing among the crowd. The dog came zigzagging back and planted herself at his heels, whereupon Mather rested a huge hand on her head and left it there.

“Well, then,” said Eva brightly. “Perhaps you have some questions for me. Perhaps you’d like to ask me about the commonwealth? Perhaps you’d like to know where our colonists stand on the subject of
corporations? After all, the colony
is
a corporation, albeit not a greedy unsympathetic one, like some.”

Mather looked about the dock restlessly. The native child, whom he now presumed to be a boy, was still standing nearby, staring at him.

“Do they serve whiskey at this colony of yours?”

“Buttermilk, perhaps. And eggnog is not out of the question. In any event, I assure you our hotel is superior to anything you’ll find here in town.”

“Ah, well, I’m afraid we’ve already made arrangements in town.”

“Well, should you find them lacking anything in the way of refinement, please call on us, Mr. Mather — that is, call on me. The colony is scarcely a mile from town. We have a theater, you know? And razors.”

“A theater. Is that so?”

“There’s a vaudeville running this week that is positively scandalous from all reports.”

“Scandalous, you say?” Rarely had Mather experienced a woman so forward and undaunted.

“Perhaps we’ll see you there, Mr. Mather. Good day.” Without further ceremony, Eva turned on her heels.

Mather watched her backside as she went. She walked with conviction but also with grace, soft steps and undulating hips. After a half-dozen steps, she turned.

“Mine is the door with the wreath,” she called over her shoulder.

Soon she was swallowed up by the crowd. Turning to resume his duties, Mather’s eyes landed once more on the native boy, who was presently tilting his head sideways as he continued to stare at Mather. Something was amiss with the child; his spastic movements, his broad forehead, his apparent lack of self-awareness. The boy was an imbecile. Smiling uneasily, Mather resumed his work.

WHAT THE OLYMPIC HOTEL
, with its splintered beams and crooked eaves and buckled floors, lacked in refinement, it offered in proximity to the Belvedere just across the muddy way. The Belvedere, for
its part, lacked all refinement but offered whiskey in excess, and a venue to conduct interviews. In spite of its high ceilings — the flimsy construction of which did not inspire confidence — the Belvedere was choked with tobacco smoke. The establishment was a hive of activity and chatter when the party arrived in late afternoon. Perhaps a hundred men, more than half of them standing, crowded the bar. An inventory of their hats alone spoke of the Belvedere’s clientele; top hats and coke hats and westerns and cattlemans, homburgs and Dakotas and Sinaloas. Wide-brimmed and narrow-brimmed, tall and squat; of felt and leather and Italian straw. Mather even spotted a lone cavalry hat in their midst. The men beneath them were every bit as dynamic as their haberdashery; clean-faced and stubbled and mustachioed, lean and wide, tall and short, stooping and straight. But every one of them — big or small, wealthy or impoverished — shared an appetite for new possibilities. The same spirit that drew them each to Port Bonita in the first place accounted, too, for the palpable air of excitement in the Belvedere, as Mather and his men made their entrance.

In his station behind the bar, John Tobin, the Belvedere Man, smiled at his own good fortune. At the behest of said proprietor, a line of stools was vacated. All eyes were on Mather and his men as they approached the bar.

“We’ve been expecting you,” said Tobin.

“I can only hope we don’t disappoint,” Mather said, claiming a stool.

“All around?” said Tobin.

“The house,” said Mather gesturing grandly.

When Haywood cocked a dubious brow, Mather patted him firmly on the back. “Not to worry, Charlie. You can thank the
Press.
”

Following a round of whiskeys that took nearly a quarter of an hour to procure, Mather and his men, aided by a handful of volunteers, shuffled several tables about, fashioning a makeshift interview station in the far corner of the bar, where a crush of men began to form. The din of the bar soon proved to be a distraction, so for a small price, Tobin was persuaded to grant Mather use of one of the upstairs rooms, normally reserved for the carnal pursuits of his patrons.
A tired mattress was condemned to a corner, and a desk was moved in from the office. A line of men soon formed up the stairs. For the remainder of the afternoon and deep into the evening, Mather and Haywood conducted interviews.

Tobin himself was among the first to volunteer.

“Whatever you find beyond those mountains, I hope it ain’t more Indians.”

“Not likely,” said Mather.

“Not likely at all,” Haywood concurred.

As the evening progressed, no less than two dozen young men pleaded their cases to join the expedition. They hailed from Pennsylvania and Nebraska and Indiana and Ohio; tradesmen, cattlemen, and miners, and even an out-of-work dentist with three fingers on his right hand. Too, there were men who were born and raised in Port Bonita, and New Dungeness, men who’d spent their lives hunting and trapping and logging the hill country from the Elwha to the Hoh. Some of them purported to possess firsthand knowledge of the interior, though invariably upon further inquiry revealed themselves to be ignorant of the mountainous terrain that lay beyond the foothills.

And not all of the men were young. A trapper by the name of Lofall, a West Virginian by way of Missouri, the owner of a dilapidated set of teeth and a gray beard of remarkable proportions, bigger in fact than Mather’s, claimed to have navigated the Elwha to its point of origin. When pressed for further information, however, Lofall professed to know the circuitous route to the origin of every river and the least resistant path over every range. It was Lofall who would eventually convince Mather that the Elwha was navigable by flatboat, a conviction that would greatly alter the course of the expedition. For all his enthusiasm, the trapper could not, however, allay Mather’s incredulity upon hearing his tallest tale of all.

“When I come out onto the bank — like I say, the river is running low and she ain’t too wide, it being late summer — I see it there on the other side, howling like the devil himself. Holding two big river rocks and crashing them together like cymbals. At first I figure it for a bear, standing on its hind legs. But I’m telling you, this was no bear. Didn’t
howl like any bear, that’s a fact. And it didn’t have a face like no bear. This was half a bear and half a man, God as my witness.”

“Were you armed?” inquired Haywood.

“Yes, I was. And, to be truthful, I can’t say why I didn’t go for my rifle. I suppose because … well, to be perfectly honest, I was scared stiff. Didn’t know what exactly I’d be shootin’ at.”

Later, Mather and Haywood would question the Indians about Lofall’s alleged bear-man, and the Indians invariably smiled knowingly but claimed to know nothing. The Klallam, he learned, were a tribe at odds, having splintered in two tribes, neither of which were to be trusted. The Siwash Klallam, wintering at Hollywood Beach, were said to be drunk and unreliable for the most part, while the Klallam at Jamestown, some twenty miles east along the strait, were said to be religious zealots, blinded by temperance and a hatred for whites. Mather opted to question the Siwash Klallam because of their proximity. Their camp was strung out for a half mile or more along the strait east of the harbor, comprising a loosely knit webwork of sagging tents, lean-tos, and odd ménages of shake and tin and canvas that defied classification. Among these habitations, a number of wooden frames had been constructed, festooned with laundry and cured fish carcasses. The gravel shoreline was littered with canoes, heaping from bow to stern with all manner of worldly possessions, from nets to baskets to iron skillets. Fires burned, or rather smoked, in uneven intervals up and down the beach, around which old Klallam women hunched to no purpose, and an occasional drunk was sprawled out.

Mather found the Indians to be every bit as forthcoming, if no more helpful, than the whites. An old woman wrapped in at least four shawls told Mather of a central basin awaiting them beyond the divide, surrounding a vast alpine lake, into whose chill waters all rivers flowed, an idyllic portrait soon corroborated by a half-dozen Klallam. They told of a wide fertile valley brimming yellow with mountain lilies. A land teeming year-round with elk, deer, and all manner of game. However, it was also noted upon nearly every occasion that the natives dared not venture into this paradise. Most were wary to even speak of the reason why. A Klallam elder calling himself Indian
George was finally persuaded to explain the matter of a certain fire-spewing bird god who nested there.

“Many years ago, too many to count, the hungry Siwash sent a hunting party deep into the mountains in search of ranging elk,” the old man explained. “The hunting was good there. The elk were plenty and offered themselves to the hunters, who were very grateful. But when Thunderbird discovered that the Siwash had entered his home, he grew angry, and he descended screeching from his snowy perch, and swooped down on them, and the beating of his wings uprooted whole forests in front of him. And when he arrived with his deafening caw, the earth heaved. He opened great chasms in the earth, which swallowed the hunters. And Thunderbird dumped mountains and rivers upon the Siwash. And they did not die courageously, our hunters, but begging for their lives. Only a few managed to survive the wrath of Thunderbird, and this they did not manage on their own — they were spared by Thunderbird as messengers to warn the Siwash.”

Apparently, the message was still alive and well in 1889, though Mather paid no heed to this warning, nor the bulk of the information he collected at Hollywood Beach, reasoning that the natives were dangerously susceptible to parable and could not be trusted to provide any credible information about the lay of the interior. Mather did, however, find their stories entertaining and judged the Klallam at Hollywood Beach to be in every way superior to the Crees and half-breeds he fought in Manitoba.

AFTER TWO DAYS
of inquiries, the party found their guide in the person of a twenty-eight-year-old Klallam named Abraham Lincoln Charles. Charles was said by a number of his people to be an excellent hunter, fisherman, and tracker, with an impressive knowledge of the Elwha and the surrounding valleys.

It was observed by one elderly Klallam that Abe Charles was “the best hunter of all the Siwash” and that he never got lost, not even in the driving snow.

“Even if he doesn’t know where he is, he knows where to go. The Little Earths live inside his head.”

The young Klallam struck an impressive figure. At six foot three, he was nearly Mather’s height but leaner and harder. He wore a Mackinaw jacket of Yukon wool and cut his hair short like a white man. Abe Charles was soft-spoken and measured in his delivery, two qualities that never failed to engender confidence in Mather, probably, he was willing to admit, owing to his own vociferous and impulsive manner. Moreover, Abe Charles did not drink. The young Klallam promised to be a welcome addition to the expedition.

Upon the eve of the party’s initial push into the interior, however, Abraham Lincoln Charles would stealthily pack his bag by the light of the dying fire and steal quietly downriver into the night.

DECEMBER
1889

On the afternoon of December 14, in the year of our Lord 1889, the good steamer
George E. Starr
chugged around Ediz Hook in a driving squall, her bowels belching hemlock and cedar, as she pulled into ragged Port Bonita. When she landed at Morse Dock, nobody clamored to greet her. Only a few tatters of wet silk bunting were left to mark the occasion when young Ethan Thornburgh strode off the
George E. Starr
onto an empty dock, clutching a lone leather suitcase, with the wind at his back and his silver-eyed gaze leveled straight at the future. He might have looked like a dandy to the casual observer, a young man of some distinction, all buttoned up in a brown suit with tails, freshly coifed, smelling of camphor and spices, his cleft chin clean-shaven, a waxed mustache mantling his lip like two sea horses kissing. But upon closer inspection, visible through the shifting mothholes in his wool trousers, a trained eye might have observed the shoe polish daubed on his underwear or the fear in his silver-eyed gaze. One might even have glimpsed the yellow blue remnants of a shiner beneath his right eye.